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David Crystal
A Little Book
of

Language

Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s
N e w Hav e n a n d L o n d o n
Copyright 2010 by David Crystal

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A little book of language / David Crystal.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-15533-4 (alk. paper)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 chapter 1

Baby-talk
We sometimes do some silly things with language. One of the silliest
happens when we find ourselves in front of a new baby. What do
we do?
We talk to it.
We probably say Hello or Whats your name? or Arent you
lovely! or something like that.
Why do we do that? The baby certainly hasnt learned any
language yet. It cant possibly understand a word of what were
saying. And yet we talk to it as if it does.
The babys mother is usually the first to strike up a conversation
with it. Heres an actual example, which was audio-recorded just a
few minutes after one baby was born:

Oh you are gorgeous, you are gorgeous, you are, you

are, you are, oh yes you are hello hello arent you
beautiful

And she went on like this for quite a while, while she cuddled
the new arrival. The baby, meanwhile, wasnt paying the slightest
attention. It had stopped crying and had its eyes shut. It may even
have been asleep. But the mother didnt care. She was being totally
ignored and yet she kept on talking.
2 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

And talking in a very funny way. I cant easily write down the
way her voice went, but it was something like this:

Oh
h
h
you
are
gorgeous,
you
are

At the beginning of her sentence, her voice was very high, and
she then let it fall all the way down. It was almost as if she was
singing. When she said hello her voice went very high again and
she stretched the word out helllloh. The arent you beautiful
was very high too, as if she was asking a question.
The other thing she did, which we cant see from the way the
words are written down, is that she rounded her lips while she
spoke puckering them as if she was giving someone a kiss. If we
say something it doesnt matter what Arent you a lovely little
baby then? but say it with our lips pushed out as far as we can,
and listen to how it sounds, it sounds like baby-talk. And thats
exactly what people call it.
The lip-rounding is an important feature of baby-talk. So is
the exaggerated melody of the voice. And theres another unusual
feature of the way the mother was talking to her baby. She said the
same thing over and over:

Oh you are gorgeous, you are gorgeous, you are, you are, you
are.

Now thats not very normal. When would you ever go up to

someone and say the same thing three times in a row? We dont
meet a friend in the street and say:
 ba b y - ta l k 3

Hi John, hi John, hi John. Coming to the shop? Coming to the

shop? Coming to the shop?

We would probably be locked up if we did that. Yet we talk like that

to babies and nobody notices anything odd about it at all.
Why did the mother do it? Why do so many of us do it?
Lets think about it from mums point of view first. She so loves
that baby, and she wants to tell it so. But theres something else: she
wants the baby to tell her back. Unfortunately, baby cant talk yet.
But maybe, she thinks, if I can get the baby to just look at me, to see
me for the first time . . . if I can just get the babys attention . . . ?
Well never get someones attention if we stay quiet or say
ordinary things. Instead we shout, or we whistle. We say something
different, something noticeable: Hey, Fred! Over here! Yooo-hooo!
Think about Yooo-hooo! for a moment. What a strange pair of
noises to make! But we hear people make noises like that when they
want someone over the road to notice them.
And we make different noises when we want to get the attention
of babies. Well never get them to notice us if we say ordinary things
in an ordinary way. Ive listened to many recordings of conversa-
tions with newborn babies, and nobody ever talks to them like this,
in a matter-of-fact tone of voice:

Good morning. I am your mother. This is a hospital. That is a

midwife. Here is a bed. Your name is Mary

Thats the sort of language wed use to talk to young children

when theyre a bit older. Its more businesslike, more informative.
More like a teacher. People talk to two-year-olds like that. Careful.
Thats a hot tap. Theres the cold one We dont talk to new-born
babies in this way.
Now think about it from the babys point of view. Here you are,
just arrived in the world, and all sorts of things are going on. Its
not been all that pleasant an experience, being born, and youve
been crying a lot. But things are settling down now. Youre warm,
and you feel comfortable, and someone is making noises at you
4 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

nonsense noises, but still Are they worth paying attention

to? If youre hearing This is a hospital. That is a midwife. Here
is a bed said in an everyday, flat tone, you might well conclude
that this new world is going to be deadly boring, and you might
as well go back to where you came from. But if you hear Oh you
are gorgeous sweeping melodiously from high to low, and repeated
several times, well maybe this new world is going to be interesting
after all! Maybe I should open my eyes and see ooh, some rather
interesting-looking lips! So whos that, then? She looks rather nice!
Baby talk is one of the ways mothers and others develop a
strong bond with their babies. And it lays the foundation for the
development of language. Without realizing it, by talking to babies
in this way we are beginning to teach them their mother tongue
or tongues, of course, if the baby is in a family where more than one
language is spoken. By repeating the sentences, and making them
noticeable, we are kick-starting the process of language learning.
When people start to learn a foreign language, they know what they
need in order to say their first words. They need to hear them said,
over and over, loud and clear, by someone who knows how to do it.
Its the same with babies. If they hear the same sounds and words
and word patterns repeated, theyll soon pick the language up.
But how soon is soon? How long does it take babies to learn to
talk? And which bits of their mother tongue will they learn first?
 ba b y - ta l k 5

babies , budgies , and bangs

We talk baby-talk to babies. But there are two other occasions

when we use baby-talk.
One is when we talk to animals. If we listen carefully to
someone talking to a pet, what we hear is something very like
what happens when we talk to babies. Indeed it can be even
more peculiar. And people dont realize theyre doing it. I once
recorded my mum talking to her budgie, and then played it back
to her afterwards. She couldnt believe she sounded so strange!
But the budgie didnt think so.
And the other occasion? Its when we tease our friends, and
treat them as if theyre babies. Imagine: you bang your finger
on something and you look to your friend for a bit of sympathy.
But your friend thinks youre making a fuss about nothing. You
hold up your finger. Look, its sore, you say. Aw did diddums
hurt a lickle finger den? asks your friend. Of course, they might
not stay your friend for long, after that!
 chapter 8

Learning to read and write

I ended the last chapter by talking about James having to learn
to read between the lines. He wasnt reading, of course; he was
listening. That expression is an interesting example of the way we
sometimes use the written language to help us talk about whats
going on in speech. Its difficult to see many of the sounds that we
speak, as I pointed out in Chapter 5. But its easy to see the marks
that we write. They are there, on page and screen.
Children learn about reading very early on if theyre fortunate
enough to be growing up in a part of the world where books and
screens surround them. Many parents read stories to their children
before they are even two years old. Some have their child on their
knee as they surf the internet. I know a two-year-old who had
learned to identify some of the letters on the computer keyboard
and could press them upon request. I wouldnt be surprised to find
a two-year-old texter out there somewhere!
If children are exposed to books, they soon learn the basic facts
of life about reading. They work it out that books have pages, and
that pages have to be turned in a certain order. In some languages,
such as English, people turn the pages from right to left. In others,
such as Arabic, they turn them from left to right. They learn that
books have to be held in a certain way that pages (and especially
pictures) look odd if theyre upside-down. And they quickly find
46 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

pictures fascinating, especially of things they know about from

their own world, such as people and animals and cars.
They also notice the little black squiggles that fill a lot of the
page. And as they get older, they realize that these are the important
bits. If a story is really exciting, it dawns on them that this is
because the reader is somehow managing to extract the excitement
out of these black marks. Here too there are rules to be learned.
The squiggles are organized in lines, and these have to be read
(in English) from top to bottom, and from left to right. Children
exposed to books written in Arabic or Chinese have to learn that
reading goes in other directions.
It doesnt take them long, either, to realize that a book stays the
same, each time its read. As a result, after repeated reading, they
come to know a favourite story off by heart. Woe betide the parent
who decides to leave out a page or two before bedtime! Once, after
a tiring day, I was telling a bedtime story and tried to shorten the
story of The Three Little Pigs by going straight from the house of
straw to the house of bricks. I thought it wouldnt be noticed if I
made it The Two Little Pigs. Not a chance. I got a severe telling-off,
and had to start the story all over again, paying special attention to
the house of twigs.
We sometimes dont realize just how much exposure children
get to the written language around them. They see it everywhere
on shop signs and billboards, in supermarkets, on the front
and sides of buses, on newspapers and envelopes, on the tins and
bottles in kitchen cupboards, in television commercials and film
credits, and, of course, on computer screens and mobile phones.
Not surprisingly, then, many three- or four-year-old children have
worked out whats going on, and its possible to carry out some
simple experiments to show this.
Collect a few pictures of objects, some of which have writing
on and some which dont. An example of the first would be a bus
with a number on the front and the name of the company along the
side, or a shop with a name above the window. An example of the
second would be a countryside scene or a group of people standing
around. Then ask the child to look at each picture and show me
 learning to read and write 47

something that you can read. Many young children can do this,
even before they can actually read anything themselves.
We can do a similar experiment with pictures like these: a woman
looking at a newspaper, a man digging a garden, a boy sending a
text, and a girl riding a bike. This time we ask: Show me someone
whos reading. If the children are at the stage of being ready to read,
they will point to the woman and the boy.
The next bit is the tricky bit recognizing the different marks
on the page. In English, there are letters and punctuation marks
to be learned. In Chinese and Japanese, there are pictorial signs to
be learned. Thats quite unusual in English, which has only a few
picture signs such as , & and @.
English like most other languages is written using an
alphabet. Alphabet is a word which comes from the names of the
first two letters in the Greek system of writing: alpha and beta. In
an alphabet, a letter stands for a sound. So, letter <b> stands for
sound [b]. Letter <s> stands for sound [s], and so on. Notice how
we need to use different kinds of brackets to show whether were
talking about a letter or a sound.
In an ideal alphabet, each letter stands for just one sound. Thats
called a phonetic alphabet, and languages which have phonetic
alphabets are very easy to read. English, unfortunately, isnt like that.
The English alphabet has 26 letters, but there are over 40 sounds in
English speech. This means that some letters stand for more than
one sound. How do you pronounce the letter <o>, for instance? It
all depends. Say these words and youll see: got, go, son, woman,
women. Sometimes its very short, as in got. Sometimes its long, as
in go. Sometimes it even sounds like an [i], as in women.
It gets worse. Sometimes two letters stand for one sound. Make
the sound which tells someone to be quiet. If we write it down, we
have to use two letters: sh. Or more than two, if we make a really
long shushing noise: shhhh. And we can add an exclamation mark
if we want to show that were saying it really loudly: sh! Thats quite
a lot to learn. But there are still more possibilities. We could write
it Sh!, with a capital letter. Or SHHH!, all in capitals. Or we could
turn it into a word, and write Shush.
48 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

Capital letters add an extra complication. Although there are 26

letters in the English alphabet, when we write them down it turns
out that there are 52, because each letter appears in two forms. We
have big A and little a, big B and little b, and so on. Printers dont
use words like big and little. Big letters are called upper-case, or
capital, letters. Little letters are called lower-case letters. These
terms come from the days when printers used to keep the letters
they needed for printing in two large boxes, or cases. The different
capital letters were held in compartments in the top box, or upper
case; the small letters were held in the lower box the lower case.
And theres one more complication. Each of these letters, upper-
case or lower-case, can appear in a number of different shapes.
Here are just some of the ways you might see letter <A> appearing
in a magazine or on a computer screen:

A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A

These are all from different printing designs, called typefaces. We

gradually learn to recognize that, despite all the differences, what we
have here is the single letter A. But to begin with, these differences
can get in the way of learning to read.
However, despite all these difficulties, most children do learn to
read well after a couple of years. Parents often teach them the letters
of the alphabet before they get to school. Many have practised
writing a few letters, such as the letters of their name. To begin
with, they think that the letters mean their name. L means Lucy.
M means Mateo. And letters take on other meanings too. X
means kiss. K means cornflakes. P means Parking. M means
McDonalds.
Its a short step from here to reading sequences of letters, such
as Ben or Dad, and saying them at the same time. Children learn
that words are things that have spaces on either side. And they
notice the shapes of some of these words standing out on the page.
In reading about Winnie the Pooh, for example, many children can
point to such names as Pooh, Tigger, and Owl, when asked to do
so, even though they cant read the other words on the page.
 learning to read and write 49

Then, the breakthrough. They work out that the sequence of

letters <d> + <o> + <g> corresponds to the sequence of sounds
they make when they say [dog]. And they discover that most words
are like this. Not all. Awkward words like the and cough have to
be learned in a different way, off by heart. But words like cat and
top and swim and strong and tomato can be sounded out letter
by letter. And, after theyve twigged that two letters sometimes
stand for a single sound, they can sound out tree and look and
thousands more words. Eventually, they wont need to sound out
words letter-by-letter any more. They become fluent readers.
But sounding out is a skill we never lose. Its something we all
do when we meet a new long word. Heres an example. Try saying
out loud the long form of the word DNA, which is an important
concept in biology: deoxyribonucleic acid. The only way to do this
is to go through it slowly, bit by bit de oxy ri bo nu cle
ic. Then have a go at saying it all at once. After a few goes, youll be
able to say it without thinking.
Some children work all this out for themselves, and end up
reading simple stories before they get to school, and even writing
short words. But for most, learning to read and write takes place
in school. And its usually in school that some children discover
that they have a special problem in learning to read. They find it
difficult to grasp the relationship between sounds and letters. They
cant hold in their minds the order in which the letters appear on
the page. Even after trying very hard, a page still looks to them like
a jumble of squiggles. Children who feel like this have dyslexia, and
they need extra help to get over the problem.
Once weve learned to read and write, were said to be literate.
People who havent learned to read and write are called illiterate.
There are millions of people around the world who are illiterate.
They havent been able to learn, perhaps because there was no
school nearby when they were young, or perhaps the school had
few books or writing materials. Even in such countries as the UK
and the USA, a surprising number of people either cant read or
have great difficulty in reading. And virtually everyone who speaks
English sooner or later comes up against the problem of spelling.
Why is English spelling such a nightmare?
50 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

special letters

How do you learn to read and write if youre blind? One of the
most widely used methods is called braille (pronounced brayl),
named after the person who invented it at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, Frenchman Louis Braille. In its most basic
form, each letter is shown in a rectangular cell by a cluster of
raised dots that can be felt with the finger tips. There are special
shapes for numbers too, and for punctuation marks and letters
with accents (in languages like French).
In a more developed version, there are shapes for some words
very frequent words, such as and, you, and have and parts
of words, such as ing (as in jumping and going). This saves
a lot of space, especially in places where there isnt much room,
such as on public signs or restaurant menus.
There are six possible dots available in each cell, and the
black dots show the ones that are raised. For English, they are
usually set out in two groups of 10, and a final group of six. If
you look carefully, youll see that K to T is the same as A to J, but
with an extra dot at the bottom. U, V, X, Y and Z are the same as
A to E, but with two dots at the bottom. W is the odd one out
because French didnt use that letter in its alphabet at the time
when Braille devised his system.

A B C D E F

G H I J K L
 learning to read and write 51

M

N

O

P


Q

R

S


T

U V


W

Y Z

Heres a sentence to decode:

 chapter 12

Accents and dialects

Its one of the first things we notice. We meet someone speaking
our language who comes from a different part of the country, or a
different part of the world, and we realize that they dont speak it in
the same way that we do. They sound different. They use different
words and different grammar. The differences may even be so great
that we have difficulty understanding them. Why is this?
The answer is all to do with accents and dialects. Its important
to understand the difference between these two terms, so Ill take
them one at a time.
A dialect is a way of talking that belongs to a particular part
of a country. It uses local words and phrases, and often these are
well known in other parts of the country. For instance, if we heard
someone talking about a wee child or a bonny coat, wed be fairly
sure they came from Scotland. (Wee means little and bonny
means pretty.) If we heard someone saying they were running
down a jigger or they were wearing a cozzy, then the odds are that
theyre from Liverpool. (A jigger is the alley that runs behind a row
of houses; a cozzy is a costume, especially one for swimming.) And
someone who says nowt (nothing) is probably from Yorkshire.
There are more English dialects per square mile in Britain than
in any other part of the English-speaking world. This is because
Britain has such a varied history, with Germanic people from
72 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

different parts of Europe settling in different parts of the country,

some mixing with Celts from Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. It didnt
take long before the settlers in one small locality developed their
own special way of talking. But all countries have accents and
dialects. In the USA, if we heard someone calling a group of people
yall (= you all), wed know the speaker came from a southern
state, such as Texas, or was copying southern speech. If someone
said dropped eggs instead of poached eggs, theyd be from the
north-east, in New England. And if we sat out on a stoop (the steps
leading up to the front of a building) munching on a hero (a type
of sandwich), we could be fairly sure of being in or around New
York.
Some dialects have hundreds of local words, and many of them
have been collected into dictionaries. We often see books of them
on sale in tourist centres around the country, and we can find lists
of them online too. All we have to do is type New York dialect,
Yorkshire dialect (or whatever) into a search engine, and well get
lots of hits. Or we can make up our own lists from the local words
we use ourselves. Dialects are always changing, and the words
young people use are sometimes different from those used by older
people.
Dialects also have distinctive patterns of grammar. For instance,
Scots English has its own way of saying not. People who say I
canna come, Im no going, and I dinna ken are likely to come
from Scotland. In standard English, wed have to say I cant come,
Im not going, and I dont know. And several local dialects around
Britain say things like five mile (instead of five miles) or I saw
thee (for I saw you).
Notice that dialect words and sentences can tell us that someone
comes from a particular town or city (such as New York), or a
particular county or state (such as Yorkshire or Texas), or a broad
part of the country (such as the north-east or Scotland). When we
look at the way English is used around the world, we can even talk
about whole countries. People talk about Australian English or
Irish English. In Chapter 10 I talked about British and American
English. Here we have dialect differences on a grand scale.
 accents and dialects 73

People in Britain say We walked along the pavement. In most

of the USA this would be We walked along the sidewalk. Think of
the parts of a car. In Britain we look out through a windscreen at a
bonnet; in the USA we look through a windshield at a hood. At
the front of a British car theres a bumper and at the back theres
a boot; in the USA they are a fender and a trunk. We identify
British cars with number plates, but American cars have license
plates. We switch on our sidelights in Britain, but our parking
lights in the USA. Inside British cars theres an accelerator, a gear
stick, and a milometer; inside American cars theres a gas pedal, a
gear shift, and an odometer.
There are also differences in grammar between British and
American English. Ask a British person the time at 3.45 and the
answer will probably be Its a quarter to four. In many parts of the
USA it would be Its a quarter of four. Someone from Britain might
say Ive just got a new coat. The equivalent American sentence
would be Ive just gotten a new coat. In Britain, theyd say The bus
hasnt arrived yet; in the USA wed also hear The bus didnt arrive
yet.
Dialect differences, then, are all to do with vocabulary and
grammar. Thats the essential point to remember when thinking
about the other important term: accent. Accents are only to do with
pronunciation. Like dialects, they tell us which part of a country,
or which country, someone comes from, but they do it through
sounds rather than through words and sentences. All the dialects
Ive mentioned have an accent. People from Scotland speak in a
Scottish accent. People from Liverpool speak in a Liverpool (or
Scouse) accent. People from America speak in an American
accent. And so on.
Actually, we need to be a bit more precise. Its better to say
that people from Scotland speak in one of many possible Scottish
accents. The way they sound in Glasgow is very different from
the way they sound in Edinburgh, and people from other parts
of Scotland sound different again. Its the same in England, or the
USA, or anywhere. Theres no such thing as a country with just one
accent.
74 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

Nor, indeed, is there any such thing as a person with just one
accent. Our accent changes over time, depending on where weve
lived and who were talking to. Ive lived in Wales, Liverpool, and
the south of England, so my accent is a mixture of sounds from all
three places. When Im in Wales, the Welsh bit of my accent comes
to the fore. When I visit Liverpool, I sound more Scouse. And when
I go to London, I sound more southern.
My accent changes, also, depending on the kind of occasion
Im involved in. If Im giving a lecture in English to a group of
students in Germany, then Ill speak a little more slowly and
carefully than usual, and my accent will sound more like someone
reading the news on the BBC. And when Im on the radio myself,
the regional features of my pronunciation become less noticeable.
Once, someone from my home town, whod heard me on the radio,
stopped me in the street and said It didnt sound like you at all!
But all these accents are me. Theyre all in my head, and my vocal
organs can handle each of them. I often unconsciously slip into
other accents, too. In fact, everyone does this. You meet someone
who has a different accent from your own, and you start getting
on well with them. After a while, youll find yourself talking a bit
like they do. And theyll find themselves talking like you do. You
end up, both of you, sharing bits of your accents. Then, when you
separate, you switch back into your normal accents again.
Why do we have accents? Ive said that they tell other people
which part of the country were from. But its not just which part
of the country. Accents can also tell others about the kind of social
background we have or the kind of job we do. Listen to the people
who read the news on the radio. Sometimes they have a regional
accent, and we can tell they come from a particular part of the
country. But often they dont. We can hear their accent, and it could
be from anywhere.
In England, that neutral accent is called Received Pronunciation
or RP for short. Its an accent that developed at the end of the
eighteenth century among upper-class people. Youll remember
how, in Chapter 11, I talked about the way these people started
to use standard English grammar? That was one of the ways they
 accents and dialects 75

found to keep their distance from the lower classes, most of whom
spoke a regional dialect. Another way was to pronounce their
words without any trace of a regional accent. If ordinary people all
over the country dropped their h sounds in words like hospital
and hand, then RP speakers would make sure they kept them in.
If ordinary people all over the country pronounced the r in such
words as car and heart, then RP speakers would make sure they
didnt.
As a result, a new kind of accent came into being. At first it
was used by the people in powerful positions in society, such as
the royal family, bishops, professors, doctors, and judges. Then
teachers began to use it in the big public schools (such as Eton,
Harrow, and Winchester), and taught it to the children. There are
many stories of children with a regional accent arriving for the
first time at one of these schools and finding the older children (or
even the teachers) laughing at the way they spoke. The newcomers
would change their accents to RP within days! That was happening
200 years ago. It still sometimes happens today.
When these children grew up, many of them became lawyers
and civil servants, or held other positions of power. Many joined
the army or navy and went abroad. The nineteenth century was a
time when the British Empire was growing. As new colonies were
gained all over the world, British people were put in charge and
they all spoke with an RP accent. Before long, that accent was the
voice of Britain. It became the voice of the BBC. And, to this day,
the accent that most foreigners are taught, when they learn to speak
British English, is RP.
Since 1800, RP has been the chief cultured accent in Britain.
A lot of people simply call it posh. It was never spoken by huge
numbers at most, by about five per cent of the population but it
was the accent that people associated with someone who was from
the higher social classes or who had received the best education.
Thats why it was called received pronunciation. It was seen as a
sort of inheritance from your ancestors.
Other languages also have cultured accents. There are posh
ways of talking in France and Spain, and in any country which has
76 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

a history of upper-class and lower-class division within society.

Other parts of the English-speaking world have their cultured
accents too. If youve seen the film Crocodile Dundee, youll have
heard Paul Hogan use one of the street accents of Australia. Not
everyone in that country speaks like he did. Many Aussies have
educated accents too.
Things have begun to change in Britain. The division between
upper and lower classes isnt as sharp as it used to be. People with
regional accents have obtained some of the top jobs in society. Prime
Minister Gordon Brown with a Scottish accent. Huw Edwards
reading the BBC news with a Welsh accent. If people telephone a
call centre to get information about train times, or how to insure a
car, the person on the other end of the phone will very likely have a
regional accent these days. Once upon a time, youd only have heard
RP. A few years ago, linguists did a survey of the accents used in call
centres in Britain, and they found that Edinburgh and Yorkshire
accents were the most popular. And some accents, such as those
from Birmingham or Newcastle, were hardly used at all.
People have strong feelings about accents. They think of them
as beautiful and ugly, intelligent and stupid, musical and
harsh, and much more. But accents cant be classified in this way.
What one person hears as melodious, another hears as grating.
And some of the accents that are felt to be unpleasant by people
inside a country are considered delightful by people outside. The
Birmingham accent is often given a low rating by people from
England. But when I played several accents to a group of foreigners
who didnt know much English, they thought Brummie was one of
the most beautiful ones.
Why do we have such strong feelings about accents and about
dialects too? Its all part of a larger story to do with the way language
expresses our identity.
 accents and dialects 77

who s there ?

There have always been accents and dialects. The earliest

writings in English have differences in spelling, vocabulary,
and grammar which show that the authors came from different
parts of the country. And if we go back much further, to the
time when humans began to talk, we can guess that there would
have been accents then too.
Imagine. Youre in your cave, and its a dangerous world
outside. You hear a noise, so you call out (in your primitive
speech) Whos there? A voice replies. If you recognize the
accent of the voice as one that belongs to your tribe, then youll
go outside happily to see what they want. But if you call out
Whos there? and you dont recognize the accent, youd better
take your club with you when you go outside, and be on your
guard. A strange voice probably means an enemy.
If evolution is a matter of the survival of the fittest, then I
think accents may have helped. Those who had the best ear for
accents may have lived longer. And actually, when you think
about it, its not so different today. I can think of some places
where the sound of an alien accent immediately puts people on
their guard. Probably you can too.
 chapter 24

Slang
What do you make of this conversation?

Bill: Im gonna take the Porker down to the bakery for some
rolls.
Ben: Ill come with you, man. I need some juice for my Pug
too.

It sounds very odd. Somebody taking a pig to a shop to get it some

bread? And buying fruit juice for a dog?
But its only odd if we dont realize that this is a special kind of
cool language used by some people who are mad keen on cars. To
understand it, we need to translate the words like this:

Porker Porsche
bakery petrol/gas station
rolls petrol/gas
juice petrol/gas
Pug Peugeot

The world of cars is full of words like this. Here are some more:

shoes wheels
152 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

windair conditioning
boots tyres
Roller Rolls Royce
Landy Land Rover

So now you should be able to understand this next sentence:

I need new boots for the shoes on my Landy.

Words like shoes and bakery are part of automobile slang.

What is slang? Theres an old rhyme which goes like this:

The chief use of slang

Is to show youre one of the gang.

This doesnt mean gang in the sense of a band of youths or crimi-

nals who fight in the streets. It means a group of people who have
the same kind of interests and background. There are hundreds of
different kinds of slang in a language. When a group of doctors get
together to talk shop, we could say they form a sort of gang. So do
a group of lawyers or footballers or teachers. And if we listened to
the members of one of these gangs talking to each other, wed hear
them use lots of words that belong only in their world.
How do I know about these words? Do I belong to the world of
cool racers and hot rods? Well, actually, no. So when I talk about
cars, I dont myself use such words as bakery and shoes. But as a
linguist I keep my ears open, and hear these words in the cinema
and on television. And I keep my eyes open too. There are several
internet sites which provide lists of auto slang, compiled by the
people who do use these words every day.
Linguists love collecting slang. Its a bit like collecting stamps
or maybe birdwatching would be a better comparison. Listen!
Theres a new word I havent heard before! What does it mean?
Who uses it? Ill write it down in my notebook. I remember going
to the doctors a few years ago, and as he wrote out a prescription
for some medicine he muttered: I think youd better have some
 slang 153

bug-juice. I wrote that down as soon as I left the surgery. He meant

antibiotics.
Bug-juice is a piece of medical slang. Normally, doctors would
use it only when talking to other medical people. So why did he use
it to me? Im not a doctor. Probably it was because we were friends
and had a similar background. When people have a lot in common,
they share their slang with each other.
Slang is actually quite difficult for linguists to find out about.
You will have your local slang that you use in your school or in your
town, and theres no way I would ever know about it unless you told
me what it was. Indeed, in your area youll probably have several
different kinds of slang. The slang that kids use in primary school is
likely to be different from what is used in secondary school. If your
town has several schools, there are often differences in the kind of
slang heard in each school. And there may even be words that are
used differently within a single school. I once worked with a group
of students in the final year of senior school, who listened out for
the slang used in their school. They found that the slang used by
first-year students was very different from their own.
Thats one of the things about slang. It changes so quickly. Words
that are in this year might be out next year. Here are some of the
slang words that were in fashion a few years ago. Do you still use
them now?

bling fancy jewellery

bones money
phat cool, great
sup, wassup whats up?
wicked cool, great
yo hello

And here are some of the slang words that were used back in the
1960s and 1970s:

blast great time

bread money
154 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

bug irritate
dig? understand?
fab fabulous, fantastic
far out excellent
funky neat, cool
groovy great, cool
pad house, home

You may know some of these words because youve heard older
people use them, or perhaps youve seen a movie (such as Grease)
where some of them turn up. And maybe you use one or two
yourselves. But most of them belong to 40 years ago.
The further back in time we go, the more difficult it is to
understand the slang people use. In Victorian England, people
on the street would talk about a billy (a handkerchief), a dipper
(a pickpocket), and luggers (earrings). And what do you think
the innkeeper means when he calls his friend a bully rook in
Shakespeares play The Merry Wives of Windsor? That was slang in
the sixteenth century for a fine fellow.
Some linguists have been very daring, in tracking down slang.
One scholar, Eric Partridge, used to go into the back streets of
London and ask shady characters about the kind of slang they used.
A gun, for instance, might be called a cannon, a rod, a heater, or
other less obvious names, such as a biscuit. Im glad he lived to tell
the tale!
Its less dangerous to explore home-grown slang. Most households
have made-up words that are known only by the members of the
family, or their close friends and relatives. For instance, do you have
a special name in your house for the remote control that changes
the channels on your TV? Here are just a few of the pet names that
people have used for this device:

bimmer pinger
blapper plinky
dibber podger
donker pringer
 slang 155

dooberry splonker
flicker woojit

A collection of these family words was published in 2008. The

editors called their book Kitchen Table Lingo.
Slang is used by people who want to show, by the way they talk,
that they belong together. Its very informal, casual, colloquial. Its
like a secret language, known only to the people who are members
of the group. Its therefore very different from the standard use of a
language, as I described it in Chapter 10. A standard language, like
Standard English, uses words that are there for everyone to use.
If we want our speech and writing to be understood by as many
people as possible, we have to avoid slang.
When we learn a language, then, one of the things we need to
do is learn which words are standard and which are slang. And we
need to remember not to mix them up. Its natural and normal to
use slang when talking with our friends. If we didnt, and used only
standard English, theyd think us a bit weird. But equally, we should
avoid slang when were talking to a general audience. We wont hear
BBC or CNN announcers using slang, for instance, because they
need to have their language understood by all their listeners.
And its especially important not to use slang when writing
something thats going to be read by people who dont belong to
your own little group. If you forget this, you can get into trouble.
If you put slang words into a school essay, for instance, dont be
surprised to get it back with the words corrected. This will be
another reason (along with the one I mentioned on p.68) why youll
get low marks.
We wont find slang words in print unless, of course, the writer
is deliberately trying to show how people talk, as in a crime novel.
Just occasionally, in this book, youll see me use a slang expression
and when I do, I put it in inverted commas, to show that its a
special usage. Youll see an example if you look back at the second
paragraph of this chapter. And theres another one coming up in the
middle of Chapter 25.
156 a l i t t l e b o o k o f l a n g ua g e

would you adam and eve it ?

About 200 years ago, people living in the East End of London
(Cockneys) began to use rhyming phrases to replace certain
words. Instead of saying feet, they said plates of meat. Instead
of saying stairs, they said apples and pears. So you might hear
sentences like this:

I hurt my plates of meat coming down the apples and pears.

Why did they do it? Probably just for fun. But criminals also used
such phrases to make it difficult for the police to understand
what they were saying.
Here are some other examples of what is called rhyming
slang.

Hampstead Heath teeth

lump of lead head
artful dodger lodger
lean and lurch church
Adam and Eve believe

The process of making up new rhymes still goes on today. What

do you think these mean?

Hes on the Adrian Mole.

I want an Ali G.
She was wearing her Barack Obamas.

I dont know whether these are used very often, but theyve all
been invented just in the last few years.

Answers: Hes on the dole.

I want a pee.
She was wearing her pyjamas.
 David Crystal
For readers of E.H. Gombrichs A Little History of the World, comes a lively
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